AZGS lead role in building the National Geothermal Data System

The Arizona Geological Survey is part of the team selected by the U.S. Dept. of Energy to build the National Geothermal Data System (NGDS), which will become the data system for DOE's geothermal energy program nationally. [right, dry steam geothermal power production at the Geysers field, CA. Credit, DOE]

The 5-year, $5 million project is headed by the Intermountain West Geothermal Center at Boise State University. Other members of the coalition are Univ. of Utah, Oregon Institute of Tech - Geo-Heat Center, Stanford Univ., US Bureau of Land Management, USGS, Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy, and the Geothermal Energy Assoc.

The Arizona Geological Survey is a partner acting on behalf of the Association of American State Geologists, and will lead the work to develop system integration, data access and discovery, and ensure interoperability using the Geoscience Information Network - GIN. Other partners are providing data content and desktop applications to use the GIN functionality. Project start-up is expected by July 1.

GIN is a collaboration among all the state geological surveys and the USGS to create a national, distributed, interoperable data network for the geosciences, using open-source standards and protocols. AZGS is building GIN with funding from the National Science Foundation and USGS and in collaboration with OneGeology-Europe, San Diego Supercomputer Center, EarthChem, and a number of corporate partners.

Last week, President Obama announced an additional $30 million is being made available to support a National Geothermal Data System, Resource Assessment, and Classification System, as part of a larger 4-part $375 million geothermal initiative (http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/news_detail.html?news_id=12541).

The DOE funding solicitation was released this week and it requires that all geothermal data collected under this program be integrated into the NGDS and data that are collected/developed must fit the prescribed metadata format of the NGDS.

We have a utilitarian project web site online for GIN while the more sophisticated interactive site is under construction.